Review: Alice Dreams Tournament

In recent times, the rise of online gaming has all but phased out the local multi-player experiences of yore. I'm sure I'm not alone when I reminisce about hours spent playing Golden Eye or Mario Kart 64 on the Nintendo 64; or long periods taking turns on PGA Tour Golf on the Mega Drive. As a kid growing up through the 16, 32 and 64-bit eras, multi-player gaming was all about getting together with a group of friends or siblings and battling it out in front of one TV with a single console and multiple controllers plugged in.

The Dreamcast represents one of the last major consoles to feature four controller ports as standard, and the inclusion of a modem makes it a system that truly straddled the eras where playing with others became an oxymoronic experience with gamers connected via the internet as opposed to being sat on the same couch. Obviously, there are still plenty of games that offer local multi-player play modes but these days it's seen as a unique selling point or gimmick rather than a standard feature. Enter Alice Dreams Tournament, an independently developed Dreamcast exclusive that borrows heavily from the Bomberman series and is all about recreating the local multi-player sessions of old, but with a modern twist.

The final look of Alice Dreams Tournament.

Alice Dreams Tournament has a pretty interesting development history, so we'll start there. The game we see today actually started life as an end of level mini-game in a totally different project, titled simply Alice Dreams. Entering development back in 2003, Alice Dreams was a 2D side scrolling platformer based loosely on the Lewis Carrol novel Alice in Wonderland, and at the end of each stage the player could unlock a short bonus game if certain parameters were met. One of these bonus stages involved a simple Bomberman-like multi-player stage that was only ever intended to be a hidden extra, but it quickly proved popular and was turned into its own game - Dynamite Dreams.

It was with this blueprint that developers Julien Desquenne and Nicolas Pochet launched a Kickstarter to get Alice Dreams Tournament turned into a reality; and the project quickly reached its meagre €8,000 target, finishing with a total of €28,000 from 374 backers (full disclosure - one of those 374 backers was me, along with several others from the Junkyard team).

How the earlier Alice Dreams game looked.

It's a great story and you can read the full history of the game here and the find the Kickstarter project page here; but let's get down to business. Alice Dreams Tournament is finally finished and many backers now have the game in their hands, so how does the Dreamcast's latest new release measure up? Let's go through the looking glass and find out...

New Projects Archive Dreamcast DLC & VMU Files

We're big fans of digital preservation here at the Junkyard (we've even been preserved ourselves, by The British Library no less), and hopefully with all of these articles, podcasts and other such nonsense we're helping the legacy of the Dreamcast survive in our own little way. Others with far more technical nous are going a step further though, and are creating online repositories for Dreamcast-related digital files that could very well slide into obscurity and vanish altogether in time.

Not a digital archive.

I've touched on the subject of digital preservation several times in the past here, and it's a topic I'm very passionate about - I even worked for the UK National Archives in the field back in 2013. This gave me a great insight into the very real issue of preserving digital files and bespoke media formats and the Dreamcast is a console with its fair share of these. Happily, two separate projects have been brought to my attention that aim to address the somewhat scattered nature of Dreamcast digital files and bring them together in one (well, two) definitive libraries that are open and free for all Dreamcast fans to access.

Sites like Blue Swirl list fan-made VMU games.

The first aims to preserve DLC files for all manner of games; while the other is dedicated to archiving VMU mini-games. And while there are many sites currently online (or accessible via Wayback Machine) that offer similar services already; many offer incomplete lists, are plagued with broken links or only offer homebrew and fan-made mini-games.

DreamPod - Episode 49

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Music in this episode is from Alice Dreams Tournament, and the AGES II disc we recently looked at. Find out more about the Shenmue bomber jacket here, the Pix ’N Love book here and the new game from Orion here. Feel free to join our Facebook group, like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter; and if you’re feeling flush and/or generous our Patreon is here. Oh, and one last thing - give us an iTunes review if you can be bothered. Cheers!

Check Out Peter Moore's Fascinating Interview With Glixel

Peter Moore has become something of a hate figure in certain Dreamcast circles. He's (incorrectly) credited as the guy who pulled the curtain down on the Dreamcast, and also accused of jumping ship and taking the US version of Shenmue II with him to Microsoft when Sega hit the rocks in the early 2000s. Whatever you think about Mr Moore though, you can't deny that he's had an amazing career in the video games industry; and now on the eve of his departure from Electronic Arts to take up a position at Liverpool FC, Peter Moore has spoken candidly to Glixel.

In the revealing interview, Peter speaks openly about his time at the head of Sega America and also the tough decisions he had to make when it came to pulling the plug on the whole Dreamcast project. There's also a really fascinating recollection of the time he told Yuji Naka (through an interpretor) to "fuck off," and how he believes Naka and Yu Suzuki were actually holding Sega back during the Dreamcast era. Again, it's a mesmerising trip down memory lane and gives some hitherto undocumented snapshots of what it must have been like to have the weight of an entire floundering gaming giant resting on his shoulders.

Head over to Glixel and read the full interview here.

Shenmue Bomber Jackets Now Available

Veteran games merchandise store Insert Coin has launched a new Shenmue-related product, and fans of Ryo Hazuki's adventures are likely to be lapping it up in droves. If you've already used your eyes to look at the images below, you'll no doubt be able to tell that it's a bomber jacket fashioned after the attire sported by Ryo as he traverses the back streets of Dobuita and Hong Kong in Yu Suzuki's as-yet-unfinished magnum opus.

In this day and age it's all too easy to just froth about anything Dreamcast related, but I'm going to give my honest opinion here: I think this jacket looks bloody awful.

It appears to be made of bargain-basement nylon and while the patches on the chest and arm are embroidered, the one on the back is screen printed. I suppose this is to be expected of a jacket that costs £60, but that doesn't explain why the colours are way off the mark. Yes, Ryo's jacket was leather in the game and leather replicas do exist...but this is just a cynical example of big businesses churning out shite to fleece (heh!) fans of a franchise. Again, I've got nothing against Insert Coin - they do some really top quality stuff and I own several t-shirts by them. But this Shenmue jacket is an affront to the Hazuki family name. Interestingly, Insert Coin did have a slightly more accurate Ryo Hazuki jacket for sale in the past (check it out here), but even that still looked a bit on the cheap side.

Check out the Shenmue bomber jacket here. If you must.

Pix 'N Love Editions Announce Dreamcast History Book

A couple of years ago, we humble bloggers at The Dreamcast Junkyard released a physical collector's guide for the Dreamcast. It wasn't much - basically a 'trainspotter's guide' to the Dreamcast library that featured no images or any Sega or Dreamcast logos and which was intended as a handy chaperone for Dreamcast fans to keep a physical track of their collecting. It went down quite well, and we still get emails to this day asking if the book is available. It isn't (at least in physical form), because Sega Europe told us to stop selling it.

We were a little confused at the time, as to why a behemoth like Sega would care about something that amounted to little more than a printed list of Dreamcast games (the PDF is still available here). We asked about working with them to produce an official guide, but they simply ignored us...and now we know why. They had commissioned French publisher Pix 'N Love Editions to create an officially licensed Dreamcast history book...

Dreamcast Streaming Service DreamStream Announced For Nintendo Switch

People with only a passing interest in research and development processes, business procedures and manufacturing fundamentals have been calling for a sequel to the Sega Dreamcast for some time now; but the desire for a bonafide 'Dreamcast 2' has fallen on deaf ears for the most part. However, it now looks like Sega is ready to give the notion at least a slight nudge in the right direction. This week, Sega announced a new partnership with old rival Nintendo which will bring Dreamcast games to the new handheld hybrid system Switch.

The service, tentatively titled 'DreamStream' will allow Switch owners to connect to a cyber razor-powered service that will initially offer a handful of HD remasters of popular Dreamcast titles like Jet Set Radio, Sonic Adventure, Spirit of Speed 1937 and Space Channel 5. Details on further games, and just how the service will work are sketchy at best right now, but this information has literally only just leaked through this article on art and tech website Art News. Quick to capitalize on the leak, Sega Europe spokesperson Avril Tonto responded to the claims:

"Sega Europe and Nintendo have a long and storied history. With this new partnership, we hope to bring much-loved franchises to a new audience."

As stated, details are thin on the ground at the moment, but we hope to bring more details as they emerge. With the strong initial sales of the Switch, and the heavy leanings toward retro emulation and classic gaming experiences, we think this can only add another string to Nintendo's bow in the fight against Sony and Microsoft.

Source: Art News